In the video of the 1977 “Breathing In/Breathing Out” performance, Ulay and Marina Abramović exchange air through their mouths. Their noses are closed, and microphones attached to their larynx amplify the sounds of this exchange. With each exhalation, the oxygen content decreases and, when carbon dioxide prevails, the two artists, on the verge of fainting, move away from each other.

Watching the video, I understand that during the pandemic years, such an artistic act would have divided the audience and the main idea of ​​the creators would have been left aside. The two artists could not have become so close, and if they nevertheless defied restrictive laws and the reactions of third parties, horror would have been drawn in their eyes much earlier. Breathing foreign air is now dangerous.

Breath

The exhibition “When the Wind Blows” at the Kunsthaus in Vienna is also dedicated to air, an element that is so directly related to life, a carrier of smells, sounds and aerosols. Through photographs, collages, videos and installations, artists talk about our complex relationship with air and the function of breathing. The average person inhales and exhales 300 million liters of air in their lifetime. Breathing is the only thing we can do perfectly when we enter the world, and the last thing we do when we leave it. We have also connected to air the cries of freedom, the renewal movement in the arts, the pioneering ideas in science, voices of protest for equal rights (the phrase “I can’t breathe” triggered Black Lives Matter), and environmental issues such as air pollution, which require an immediate solution for the continuation of our life on Earth. The guest authors try to take a comprehensive look at the subject, drawing both on ancient myths and beliefs about the power of the wind, and on research and scientific experiments. They take elements from different sources and “graft” them with their own experiences and experiences to make tangible the air, an element that exists within us, but very often escapes our attention. The breadth of the topic is understood by the visitor already from the beginning of the exhibition, when he sees a large-scale collage of the Finnish woman Nigina Vatanen. Images of clouds and plants, satellite images of hurricanes and photographs of people talking “marry” each other, capturing all the “places” that the air touches.

With air we associate cries of freedom, artistic movements, voices of protest and environmental issues.

Olafur Eliasson, with Corner of the Winds, an invisible sculpture formed when air meets human bodies, reminds us to pay tribute to the intangible monument of our existence, while the Portuguese Eduardo Leal accuses us of frivolity with a series of eye-catching photographs. . Colorful plastic bags hanging from bushes in the most remote corners of the planet obey the wind. After all, which is easier to seduce? Our consciousness or plasticity?

Changing of the climate

Of great interest are two works in the exhibition by Emily Parsons-Lord, a Sydney-based artist who has dedicated her entire work to how we perceive and manipulate air. In her three-channel video called “Our Fetid Row,” she shows politicians speaking about the dangers of climate change. However, when editing, he deftly only holds his breath between words. So what’s left besides hot air? In her impressive installation The Confounding Leaving, she invites us to take a deep breath. He claims that 300 million years ago, oxygen levels were twice as high as they are today. With this thought as his starting point, he went back into the past of the Earth and reconstructed air from different geological periods, preparing mixtures based on scientific measurements. What will it be like to change your air from the Phanerozoic era to the future era?

Until 28 August, www.kunsthauswien.com.